Yeah, basically both super duper encrypted privacy oriented services want your phone number.

Sorry, but that's not privacy. I don't care what they do to encrypt your messages, they are still tied to me, which makes the super duper encryption pointless.

SimpleX is the best E2E chat app that doesn't require phone numbers (or even any account signup) that I've tried.

You compare apples with oranges. Because if you'd compare the apples , you'd notice one of them has no usable E2E.

Yes oranges umm phone numbers is a problem. They have that both. Only one can additionally read the contents.

Thats for now the price for a normie interface.

First goalposts first.

I agree with you that Telegram does not even have E2EE and that's bad.

But in this thread, GP was just talking about metadata. The goalpost here is metadata. GP particularly mentioned that Signal "fixed" the phone number issue and I just want to note that currently Signal isn't any better than Telegram in this aspect.

And then you moved orange back.

> Telegram does not even have E2EE

This is incorrect. Telegram has E2EE.

https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end

I don't see how I can start an E2EE chat from my PC. If a feature only ever exists on phone it does not exist.

https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/871

...in secret chats, that are only available in 1-to-1 conversations via mobile apps.

So, not on by default (unlike Signal), no group chats (unlike Signal), no support at all in desktop apps (you've guessed it: unlike Signal).